Prior to the end of last month, it’d been almost four years since Lupe Fiasco released an album. His last project came back in 2018 with Drogas Wave. That project arrived with 24 songs and multiple features from Nikki Jean as well as contributions from Damian Marley, Simon Sayz, Crystal “Rovel” Torres, Elena Pinderhughes, and Bishop Edgar Jackson. Last month, Lupe returned with Drill Music In Zion, which delivered a ten brief songs with Ayesha Jaco and Nayirah. Now that the album has been out and available to enjoy for some time, Lupe took a moment to explain the project’s title during a sit-down with SiriusXM.
“What I can say, and this isn’t to get you to listen to the album by any means,” he said. “The best definition of the title was actually from my sister. My sister does the opening record on the album, Ayesha Jaco. She did the opening on my first two records, Food & Liquor and The Cool.” He added, “I gave the title to her, and it’ll make sense when we get into it because I did this record in three days, and I didn’t have time.” He continued:
There’s a scene from Matrix 2 where they’re in Zion, so everybody knows the name of the little sanctuary where the humans were able to live in the Matrix movie is Zion. That place is a sanctuary away from all the agents and other stuff. But there’s a scene in there and the whole arc of the movie the robots have found a way to drill down in Zion. So they finally found it and maybe it’s Matrix 2 there’s a scene where they’re all standing in Zion and it’s all quiet then all of a sudden you see pieces of the ceiling fall and it’s this whole epic scene. So that one scene in the film became the whole inspiration from the joint.”
Lupe also noted that a line in a freestyle also sparked the idea to call the album Drill Music In Zion and said that he was forced to commit to it at that point.
You can check out Lupe’s interview with SiriusXM above.